by Lexi Blake
Armie’s jaw tightened. “Is this about that boy? Caleb Granger?”
“Not exactly.” Noelle had gone bright red. “Caleb is just a friend. It was about something else. I . . . I wanted to know if it worked. My female parts. I want to know if I can have sex.”
Armie’s eyes went wide. “No. No, you can’t have sex. You are sixteen and you are far too young and it’s not happening. Not on my watch. I swear I’m going to talk to that little shit. Sniffing around my daughter. He can spend some time in jail and then we’ll see if he tries to take advantage of my daughter again.”
“Dad!”
Lila had to step in front of him. “Stop right now. Cool down, Sheriff. She is a responsible young woman. She didn’t ask me for condoms, although you should know that if she had, I would have given them to her. She isn’t trying to have sex with some kid. She’s trying to experiment, and she has every right to do that. Just because she’s in a wheelchair doesn’t mean she can’t eventually enjoy sex, and that includes masturbation. And don’t you dare give me some moral lecture on the evils of masturbation. I bet you can’t tell me you didn’t do it when you were her age.”
He stopped, his whole body going still. “You talked to her about . . . that? You talked to her about how to do that? She’s not pregnant?”
“Dad, eww, no. I haven’t done anything that could get me pregnant. Why would your brain even go there? Why?” Noelle shuddered.
“Likely because he was doing far more than self-pleasure at your age.” She couldn’t imagine teenage Armie hadn’t been the local player.
“When she said you ordered something, I thought it might be a pregnancy test,” Armie said.
“I bought her a wand,” Lila admitted. “It’s for clitoral stimulation. I think she should start there.”
“I want to die.” Noelle picked up a pillow and muffled her scream into it.
Armie’s shoulders dropped. “So you talked to my daughter about sex and bought her something to help her feel more normal?”
Lila nodded.
Armie sighed, a deeply relieved sound, and then he was wrapping her up in his arms. He lifted her off the ground and held her against his body. “Thank you for being so kind to my daughter.”
“You’re not mad at me?” She let her arms drift up around his shoulders. “Because I meant what I said, Armie. I think she has the right to have a private life.”
“She does,” he agreed. “I’m sorry I reacted the way I did, but you’re right about what I was doing at her age. And she’s my baby. I worry about her.”
She could understand that. “You can’t arrest every boy who wants to date her.”
“On this we are going to have to disagree.” Armie set her on her feet and kissed her forehead. “So I will happily give you permission to talk to my daughter about all the female stuff, and I will not ask about it again.”
He’d ceded that fight quickly.
“Can I die now?” Noelle asked.
Armie ignored her, his eyes on Lila. “I want you to take your coffee and sit on the back porch and enjoy the morning. I’ll get everything else ready and we’ll have a nice breakfast.”
“Or I could help you. Actually, I don’t normally eat breakfast,” she admitted.
Noelle’s head came out of the pillow. She managed to go from embarrassed to disappointed in a heartbeat. “But I brought you donuts. They’re my favorites from this place in town. I would have brought beignets, but they don’t travel well. The donuts were a way to say thank you.”
It wouldn’t hurt to have one donut, though she didn’t see the need to sit on the porch.
Still, she found herself being hustled outside, a mug of coffee and a donut in her hands.
She sank down in the surprisingly comfortable rocker. There were two of them, side by side. She could imagine the couple who’d owned the house sitting here, watching the sunset.
It was quiet in the early morning hours, the world seeming softer. Maybe it was simply that she’d gotten sleep the night before. Maybe it was that she’d never taken the time to sit in Dallas, never gone on the balcony of her condo and watched the city come to life around her as she sipped coffee and ate donuts.
It wasn’t terrible.
She took a deep breath and let her mind float, let the sights and sounds of the world around her sink in.
She sipped the coffee, feeling more peaceful than she had in years. She could hear Armie in the kitchen and Noelle telling her dad how he was doing everything wrong. It was nice to not be alone all the time.
And maybe she should get her nails done. It might be fun.
She sat back and sipped her coffee.
That was damn fine coffee.
chapter eleven
Two days later, Lila looked over at Remy’s sister and wondered if she’d ever been that young and enthusiastic.
“I think we should go with something a little bigger. You’ve got such amazing hair. It shouldn’t be in a bun all the time.” Seraphina Guidry was all of twenty-five years old and was brimming with enthusiasm for her new job.
“I was only looking for a trim,” Lila explained.
Seraphina had long blond hair. At least four hundred pounds of it, and it was teased into something that would make a showgirl jealous as hell. It was gorgeous on the lithe young woman but would look utterly ridiculous on her. There were people who could pull off teased hair. She was not one of them.
Sera frowned at her in the mirror. “You don’t need a trim. You need to let it grow out. It barely brushes your shoulders. I think you need to let it get about halfway down your back and then we can do the most gorgeous updos. I was first in my class in updos.”
“She recently did a wedding for a bride two towns over and all anyone could talk about was the bride’s hair.” Lisa gave her a thumbs-up.
She was not getting married, and big hair had no place in a medical clinic.
“I need a no-nonsense cut. I don’t spend a lot of time on my hair.” Most mornings she washed it, dried it, shoved it in a scrunchie. “I won’t need much. I color the grays once every six weeks or so. I promise I’ll be very low maintenance.”
“There’s no such thing,” Sera declared. “Not here. Beauty takes work, and you’re a beautiful woman. We need to find your style.”
“What if my style is scrubs and scrunchies?”
“It kind of is, most of the time,” Lisa interjected. “But when she goes out, I like to call her style modern stick up the ass.”
Lila rolled her eyes. “It’s understated elegance.”
“I like my version better,” Lisa quipped.
Sera giggled. “Don’t be silly. Let me grab the biggest barrel curling iron I can find and we’ll have so much fun. How do you feel about a total makeover?”
Terrified. Completely terrified.
“Non, non, ma fille.” Marcelle Martine was a stately looking woman. At least five foot ten, she towered over Seraphina, but the differences didn’t stop there. Miss Marcelle, as they called her, despite her marital status, was one of those women who didn’t look her age. Oh, she’d read the woman’s file and knew she was sixty-two, but Marcelle could have been in her forties for that barely lined face. Her hair was up in a turban and she wore a brilliantly colored caftan that contrasted her dark skin. “You work on Lisa’s hair. I will deal with the town heroine myself. Girl, everyone is talking about you.”
If only they would come into her clinic. It was a little better than it had been before the accident. She’d had a follow-up with Hallie Rayburn, who’d promised to bring her baby back for a full well check soon. A local teenager had decided making videos of himself doing skateboarding tricks was a good idea. He’d discovered the joys of getting a cast.
Lisa was sitting in the chair beside her and gave Marcelle a smile that came nowhere near her eyes. Not even close. “Really? Beca
use I was thinking it would be a fun way for Sera to get to know my sister.”
Ah. She knew all her sister’s tricks. “I think I have to go with Miss Marcelle. Everyone says she’s the finest hairdresser in town, and obviously Sera would know exactly how you like your hair done since you’re so close.”
Sera practically vibrated with enthusiasm. “Oh, I’ve actually been dying to get my hands on your hair, Lis. It’s so thick. I can make it go a mile high. You’re going to love it.”
Sera clapped her hands and ran toward the back of the salon.
Marcelle shook her head Lisa’s way. “You should be ashamed, trying to sic that puppy on your poor sister. You know she’s going to try to talk you into highlights. Unless you want to leave this salon looking like a broke-down disco ball, you will hold that line.”
“You hired her,” Lisa said, the words coming out in a whisper as she made sure Sera wasn’t around.
Marcelle shrugged. “She’ll be good one day. It’s not like I have a lot of options since Francine took off for Florida to live out her dream of working at a retirement home. I’ve never known a woman so focused on the elderly. I miss her. Sera finally finished cosmetology school and she’s willing to do ten perms a day on some of the oldest, orneriest clients you’ve ever met, and I include your mother-in-law in that group.”
“You are my mother-in-law’s best friend,” Lisa pointed out. “And her partner in crime.”
Marcelle waved that off. “I don’t consider it a crime. I put the hex on the tourist. Delphine takes it off.”
“For forty bucks,” Lisa explained.
Marcelle put her hands in Lila’s hair, getting a feel for the texture. “And the tourist gets an authentic bayou experience. We all win. And the fact that Delphine and I have been through all sorts of ups and downs over the years is another reason why I had to hire Sera. Like I said, she’ll be good in a year or two. Until then there’s going to be some awfully big hair for you white girls in the parish. You’re welcome. I’ll be right back, Miss Lila. You remember this when my next checkup comes ’round. I’m the reason you won’t walk out of here looking like a pageant reject.”
She sashayed away.
Lila turned on her sister. “Traitor. After everything I’ve done for you, this is what I get.”
Lisa had the good sense to wince. “Sorry. There are only the two of them working today, and Marcelle is the best. Sera . . . Sera is very enthusiastic. I let her do my nails a couple of weeks back and I had claws. Actual claws. I couldn’t work my phone or drive until I managed to get those fake nails off. I’m trying to support her because she’s really gotten her shit together in the last year. Being a single mom in a small town is rough.”
She could only imagine. “I think being a parent anywhere is rough.” It had been three days since the accident and that first night with Armie in her bed, but it already felt like the world had changed. “I’m worried about Noelle.”
Lisa turned her chair toward her. “What’s going on? I thought she liked you. You seemed to get along fine the other day.”
“It’s not about that. I like her a lot.” She’d spent the night before at Armie’s. He’d shown up when the clinic closed and convinced her that coming back to his place for dinner was a brilliant idea. She’d followed him, promising herself that it was only dinner and it might convince people that she wasn’t after the richest man in Papillon. The gossip game was strong in this town and there were still rumors about her and Rene. She’d spent a pleasant evening watching Armie cook and then sitting around the kitchen table and listening to Noelle talk about her day. They’d watched a movie and she’d fallen asleep, leaning against him. He’d carried her to bed and made love to her, and she hadn’t had the dream. But she did have concerns, and she wasn’t sure how to go about addressing them. “After you left the other morning, Armie, Noelle, and I had breakfast. While I was cleaning up, I found a large envelope I didn’t recognize. It was halfway in the trash. I opened it.”
“Of course you did. I would, too. What was in it? Was it crazy police stuff?”
Her sister sometimes treated the town like it was all a TV show meant to entertain her. “No. It was a report from Noelle’s college counselor.”
Lisa sat back, crossing one leg over the other. “I thought she was homeschooled.”
“She is, but it’s through a school in California,” she explained. “They offer her a lot of things a physical school does, from what I understand. I know I should have tossed it out. That’s obviously what she was trying to do, but I couldn’t. It was a letter asking her if she’d considered applying to any of the colleges that are interested in her. Apparently her PSAT scores made some colleges take notice. The counselor thinks she could be accepted into an Ivy League school.”
“That’s amazing. I don’t see what the problem is. I knew that girl was smart the first time I met her.”
“She’s insisting on taking online courses instead of leaving Papillon.” She’d gently questioned Noelle the night before during dinner. She hadn’t told her she’d found the counselor’s package. Armie had seemed perfectly happy to go along with whatever Noelle wanted. “I asked about her plans and she shrugged and said she would work part time at the station house and maybe take some online courses. That kid needs to go to college.”
“You can get a lot done online these days,” Lisa pointed out.
It wasn’t the same. “She needs to see more of the world. I get that this is her home, but I know that going to college and having the experience of being independent was incredibly important for all of us.”
They’d been a chain, each sibling leaning back to support the others. Will had worked his ass off to send Lila to college, and Lila had done the same for her younger sisters. They’d slowly climbed their way out of the poverty of their childhood. Noelle wasn’t poor, but she had so much potential. There wasn’t anything wrong with staying in her hometown if that’s what she wanted, but Lila suspected there were other reasons Noelle was staying in Papillon.
“How do I talk to Armie about this?” It had been bugging her for days.
Lisa thought for a moment. “You’re really starting to care about him, aren’t you?”
“I am. I know it’s weird and that we don’t seem like we would fit together. He’s not my usual guy, but I feel different around him, like I don’t have to put on a front with him.” One of the things she’d figured out was that her usual guy had kind of sucked. Her usual guy had basically been a prop, an accessory she selected to go with the life she thought she’d wanted. Armie was real. A relationship with him would be difficult, and he could truly break her heart if he wanted to. And she was still going to try.
Lisa reached out and put a hand on her arm. “I’m glad to hear that. I’m so proud of how you’re opening up.”
It was odd because she’d always been the older sister, but in this Lisa was the leader. “So help me figure out how to deal with this, because Noelle is becoming important to me, too.”
Lisa nodded and settled back in her chair. “Armie is pretty protective of Noelle. I think he feels guilty. Divorce is always rough, but then he had to leave New Orleans and he saw less of Noelle.”
“Are we talking about how Armie coddles that girl?” Marcelle was back, Seraphina behind her. “Because he does. I worry about her. She needs a momma. Daddies are too soft on their daughters, and she needs some tough love or she’s going to end up living in her daddy’s house for the rest of her life.”
“There’s nothing wrong with living with your parents,” Sera said with a frown. “Just until you can save enough money for a place of your own.” She sighed. “Except it’s got to be close to my momma or I won’t have a babysitter for Luc. I’m a little worried about that, though. I think Momma might be planning on training Luc to help her with short cons.”
Marcelle waved that off. “Boy’s gotta have a profession. An
d it’s not the same. You’ll eventually find a nice man and settle down. You have a job and you get out in the world. Noelle isolates herself. I don’t think she’s been out of this town since the accident except for doctor’s visits. Armie tried to take her to Disney World for her sweet sixteen and she wouldn’t go.”
“I’ve offered to pay her to babysit Luc for me, but she told me she couldn’t because she’s in a wheelchair,” Sera said. “I don’t see why she can’t. At the time he didn’t do much more than sleep and poop, and she could always have called someone if she needed help.”
“She won’t try,” Marcelle pointed out. “She’s scared of everything, and I understand that, but her daddy needs to push her.”
“You know why he won’t.” Sera started combing through Lisa’s hair. “I heard him talking to my cousin one night at the bar. He had a fight with his ex-wife the day of the accident and he told her she had to bring Noelle to him for his time with her or he would take her back to court. She was on the road that night because Armie insisted on it.”
Insisted on seeing his daughter? Of course he had. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“It can be hard to see that.” Lisa stared at her pointedly. “Sometimes a person does everything she can to help someone out and it doesn’t work. It’s not her fault.”
Yeah, she’d been told that a hundred times and she did understand that. But logic and that terrible feeling in her gut were two different things. Armie had the same trouble. The only problem was she agreed with Marcelle. Noelle needed a push.
And she’d just thought of the way to do it. It was something she’d been planning to do anyway. After she’d studied Noelle’s charts, she’d decided they needed to try something new.
Maybe she needed to try something new, too. “How do you think I would look with bangs?”
“I think that would be amazing and Lisa needs some highlights,” Sera said, her joy obvious.
Before Lisa could bark out what had to be a denial, the door flew open and Mabel was standing there.
